[Peace-discuss] Neocon women

[Carl G. Estabrook]

'THE MONSTROUS REGIMENT OF WOMEN' (PACE JOHN KNOX, 1558)

It is coincidental that the extreme neocons in the neocon (and neoliberal) Obama/Clinton administration are women - Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, UN Ambassador Samantha Power, and National Security Advisor Susan Rice.

But it is not adequate (if accurate) to dismiss their ideas as "bat-shit crazy," as Pepe Escobar does. Their ideas are not stupid but vicious, and they should be acknowledged, exposed, and condemned. They consist principally of specious arguments for the Obama administration’s belligerent policy - including killing people in Ukraine and risking war in the South China Sea - in order to retard the economic integration of Eurasia (a principle point of US planners, especially in Democratic administrations: see President Carter’s National Security Advisor, Z. Brzezinski, “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives,” 1997.)

Their intellectual bodyguards include Anne-Marie Slaughter, head of the New America Foundation and former director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post. Slaughter waxes enthusiastic (and demotic) in her praise for Applebaum’s war-mongering column in the WaPo this morning: “@anneapplebaum nails it. This is exactly right. ‘America’s foreign policy recovery” <http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/americas-foreign-policy-recovery/2015/06/12/e89d609e-10fb-11e5-9726-49d6fa26a8c6_story.html>. 

Applebaum’s column is a perfidious propaganda exercise. (She blocked me on Twitter when I wrote to Slaughter and her to object to it.) A parodic Lady Macbeth, she guys Obama for inaction, while he is conducting war in eight countries (two more than Bush), sending US death squads into more than 100 countries, and killing thousands of people with drones - “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times” (Chomsky).

“...American influence in Europe is shrinking, along with American engagement in the world ... [some] blame the current administration, with ... good cause. President Obama’s failure to defend his own ‘red line’ in Syria and his admitted lack of strategy against the Islamic State have left many wondering whether he’s interested in the Middle East at all. The same problem exists with regard to Russia, where there is a strange split between NATO military leaders, who are publicly very blunt in their assessment of Russian maneuvers over the Baltic Sea and Scandinavia, as well as in Ukraine, and the strangely sanguine White House...”

That (and more) is an outrageous white-washing of Obama administration machinations in Ukraine, which have installed a fascist government and sent it off to kill thousands of people who objected to it.  Along with Obama’s bellicose “pivot to Asia,” the exaggerated pursuit of constant American policy in Eurasia by the Obama administration has brought the world closer to war - even nuclear war - than almost any time since the mythologized “Cuban missile crisis.” And Slaughter and friends are calling for more.  

A model of what they want was Hillary Clinton’s installation of a creature of hers, Suzanne Nossel, as head of Amnesty International USA three years ago, to make the argument that the continuing US war in Afghanistan was necessary for the protection of Afghan women. Nossel’s academic credits included coining the term "Smart Power" in the title of a 2004 Foreign Affairs article defending US imperialism via military power as well as other forms of “soft power.”

Code Pink and others called for Nossel's resignation due to her support for the war in Afghanistan. After a year, she moved on to head the PEN American Center. Chris Hedges resigned from PEN in protest of Nossel's appointment, writing that "Nossel's relentless championing of preemptive war — which under international law is illegal — as a State Department official along with her callous disregard for Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinians and her refusal as a government official to denounce the use of torture and use of extrajudicial killings, makes her utterly unfit to lead any human rights organization, especially one that has global concerns."

At Pen, Nossel sparked objections and resignations when she presided over “hero” awards to the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, leading Glenn Greenwald to ask her, “Would PEN consider anyone who is killed for their views a ‘hero’ without regard to the substance of those views?” and “Is there any validity to the concern about former Obama administration officials running human rights and similar groups that are supposed to be adversarial to the government?”

Slaughter, Nossel, and Clinton will be condign successors of Nuland, Power, and Rice - and Obama - if there is another Democratic presidential administration. In comparison with most of the Republican contenders, they will be another example not of the lesser evil but “the more effective evil” (Glen Ford). 

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